Video Vednesday: Buffy Studies and The Future

I like my Video Vednesday theme so I thought I’d do another, especially since I’ve recently discovered a new YouTube channel that I really enjoy. I also found another really fun video today, so I figured I’d share them both. One is about the future in (not of) movies, and the other is about one of my favorite television series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’m subscribed to a few YouTube channels, even though I don’t watch YouTube that often. I personally prefer to watch things on my television, rather than my computer, and when I’m on the computer, I’m trying to work, not fall down a video hole—as much fun as those are. But I do get those emails from YouTube telling me about the latest videos from my subscriptions. More often than not, I don’t click on the corresponding video, but in this case, both of the videos today came from those emails. And I’m really glad I looked at them.

The first is an entertaining “Look Back at the Future in Film,” by Robert Jones. I think Jones had put together one of those many dance film compilations that make the rounds online, so that’s why I subscribed to his channel. A dance compilation is something I’d really like to try my hand at building myself, one of these days. I imagine it’s extremely time consuming, and it took me a while to put together the Halloween Grand March I did.

I admit the Look Back was not what I was expecting—I thought it would compare “the future” as captured in movies with our actual future-present—but nevertheless, I really enjoyed it. It was fun naming all the films I recognized, and seeing several I didn’t, and it’s a smooth, seamless edit. I personally would have liked to see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in there, but perhaps it’s more “space” than “future.”

While I enjoyed the Look Back, it’s basically just fun. That’s all. No deep message or critical analysis. And that’s fine; there’s nothing wrong with that. But the other video today, the channel I recently discovered and subscribed to, has so much more substance. It’s called Passion of the Nerd, and I need to look into the person who creates the videos more. His voice is familiar, and I wonder if he’s involved with some of my other favorite channel subscriptions, like Cinema Sins (the “Everything Wrong With” series). I’m actually hoping to contact him and see if I can ask him more questions about his process (maybe for a future blog post).

As all my friends know, and my readers will quickly figure out, I’m a huge fan of television. But what they may not know is that my love of TV is largely because of the Joss Whedon show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy was my gateway drug into the wonderful world of series television.

I was fairly snobbish about television in grade school and high school, and I was proud of the fact that there were only a few shows I watched (like Fame). I didn’t watch Buffy when it first aired on TV, because of my snobbery (something Passion of the Nerd addresses, as I’m not the only one), but eventually I decided to give it a try. (Actually it was because of the musical episode, “Once More, With Feeling,” but I’ll get into that another day.)

Once I started on Buffy, I was hooked. The two-part pilot, “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest,” grabbed me by the throat and said, “you must watch more!” Alex and I slammed through the first season and a half in about three days (neither of us were working at the time), and it became our world. I (still) love everything about it: the characters, the story, the acting, the metaphors. Most importantly, I had no idea before then that this is what a television show could be like. It has history, it has memory. It’s such an incredible medium for telling a story. I never cared about spoilers until I started watching Buffy.

Most (almost all?) of the videos on Passion of the Nerd deal with Buffy, and the spin-off series Angel (which I also love, and would like to watch again). They’re so smart, so perceptive and incisive, while also being entertaining and funny. I admit I’ve only watched a few of them so far because of time, but they’re very clever and well done. They’re also fairly long, because they go pretty in-depth.

The most recent video is a list of the Top 10 tear-inducing episodes of Buffy or Angel, and just the opening segment is so touching. We get a glimpse of the person behind Passion of the Nerd (I think his name is Ian, but I’m not sure), as he explains some of why the Buffyverse is so important to him.

The one problem with this video is that the subtitles seem to belong to an earlier version of the script, and don’t always match his audio. That’s not so bad, except in this video I noticed a couple times where the subtitles say something important that the audio doesn’t repeat. You might want to keep an eye on them.

If you haven’t seen Buffy or Angel, then you might want to start with a different video of his, because this one is chock full of spoilers. But if you have seen them, then you’ll probably love this trip back through the series.

Both of these videos are cool, smart, and good fun. But besides that, I really appreciate the huge amount of work put into both of them. It’s something I greatly admire and would love to do more of myself.

So what do you think, readers? Are you Buffy fans too? Did you enjoy these two video productions? Discovered any cool videos yourself lately?

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I'm so glad you stopped by. I'm a writer, former dancer, and pop culture junkie who firmly believes in the Oxford Comma. I love geek-related things, but I'm not a big video gamer and I'm starting to suffer from Comic Book Hero burnout, so I'm just to the side of geek. Geek Adjacent! Please take a look around, and I hope you stay. If you do go away, please come again, and bring your friends! :) Feel free to contact me: camusr6@gmail.com.

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